Choosing Openness, the Power of the Internet, Pinnacle Moments

In the “Around the Web” series, we highlight great adoption writing from around the Internet. Have you read something you think should be shared in an “Around the Web” post? Let us know!

At Raising Paityn, Tiffany (adoptive mom) writes about the ten reasons she chose open adoption.

I have been asked how I can handle having Livie’s birth mom in her life. My response is that Livie is my daughter, and my love for her means that what is comfortable or easiest for me has no place in making a decision for her best interests.

Interestingly enough, her birth mother also put aside her own feelings and did what she felt was best for Olivia when she chose us to be Livie’s family.

I choose to believe that my daughter will have a big heart. One that is big enough to love Mama and Papa and her birth parents, too. Truthfully, I hope she will love them. I want to believe that we are raising a daughter who will have that capacity for love. Read the full post

In a similar vein, Marisa Howard-Karp (adoptive mom) shares the eight reasons she’ll never get off her open adoption soapbox in a guest post at AmericaAdopts.

I went into our first home study feeling hesitant and scared about open adoption. But six years after entering our first open adoption, I am a wholehearted believer.

So when people try to tell me that openness confuses children or ask if my wife and I are afraid that our children’s first parents will want them back or declare emphatically that they could never share their children with someone else, I see it as my job to tell them why I love open adoption. Read the full post

Jenna Hatfield (first mom) from The Chronicles of Munchkin Land talks about how the power of the internet has changed the shape of her adoption experience.

[The power of the internet has] shown me that different doesn’t diminish, but diminishing does hurt us all. We all have different stories, beliefs, ways of coming to terms with and understanding our journeys. Across the triad and beyond, we are all simply different. Those differences don’t diminish our stories; one story is not more important than the other, one story is not inferior to another. In fact, those differences make our stories all the more powerful. Read the full post

Finally, Amanda (adopted adult) at The Delassified Adoptee wrote a powerful seven-part series describing significant moments in her personal “adoption story”.

Like lots of adoptees, I have been asked to share my “adoption story” from time to time. I never could pin down what belonged in one story that defined “adoption” in my life. So, in nearly 550 posts, I have poured into this blog pieces of my narrative for anyone to read. When I was recently asked to share with some students at a nearby university some moments in my life that lead me to grassroots activism, I realized that the same pinnacle moments that I described that lead me to advocate for other human beings were the same steps that helped me process being adopted. Those pinnacle moments are my “adoption story” if I am ever to consider myself to have one main “story.” Start the series here

About the author:
A mother by open adoption, Heather Schade is the founder and editor of Open Adoption Bloggers. She writes at Production, Not Reproduction.